Spanish Anarcho-Syndicalists in Toulouse: The Red-and-Black Counter-City in Exile

Abstract

This essay explores the Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement in exile and its efforts to re-establish its organizational structure in France during the Francoist years. The focus is on the Toulouse stronghold, where the anarcho-syndicalists came closest to succeeding in their efforts to recreate the ‘proletarian public sphere’ that so characterized their organizational efforts in urban Spain. Through an examination of the main strengths and weaknesses of the exiled movement, we gain an insight into the post-Francoist crisis of anarcho-syndicalism, when it failed to re-establish itself as an important trend in the workers' movements.

Key words:

• Spanish anarcho-syndicalist movement
• Toulouse stronghold
• crisis of anarcho-syndicalism workers' movements

Notes

1 ‘The nomad always has his eyes on his country of origin; and it is with regard to this that one suffers, one feels deprived, just working, working and waiting’: letter from José Peirats in exile in Panama to his parents in La Torrassa, l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, 6 March 1943, in José Peirats, De mi paso por la vida, 5 vols, (unpublished memoirs), V, book 10, p. 4 This work consists of five volumes divided into distinct sections, described by the author as ‘books’ (b.). All translations are by the author.

2 ‘People should not be uprooted from their land or country, not by force. It leaves people in pain, the land is in pain. At birth they cut our umbilical cord. They exile us and nobody will cut our memory, our language, the heat. We have to learn to live like the carnation, depending on the air alone. I am a monstrous plant. My roots are thousands of kilometres from me and we are not even connected by a stem, we are separated by two seas and an ocean. The sun looks at me while they breathe in the night air, they hurt under the sun’ (Juan Gelman, ‘Bajo la lluvia ajena [notas al pie de una derrota]’, in his Interrupciones 2 [Buenos Aires: Ediciones Seix Barral, 1998], 27).

3 Chris Ealham, Anarchism and the City (Oakland: Ak Press, 2010), 45.

4 The most important newspapers in exile were Solidaridad Obrera and CNT, two of the historic titles of the movement in Spain. For an analysis, see Fernando Gómez Peláez, ‘De “Soli” a “Frente Libertario”. Publicaciones libertarias en el exilio’, in El movimiento libertario español: pasado, presente y futuro, ed. Cuadernos de Ruedo Ibérico (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1974), 129–33.

5 The most useful works consulted for this study are José Borrás, Del radical-socialismo al socialismo radical y libertario. Memorias de un libertario (Madrid: Fundación Salvador Seguí, 1998); Abel Paz (Diego Camacho), Al pie del muro (1942–1954) (Barcelona: Hacer, 1991) and Entre la niebla (1939–1942) (Barcelona: Medusa, 1993); Ramón Álvarez, Historia negra de una crisis libertaria (México D.F.: Mexicanos Unidos, 1982); Juan Giménez, De La Unión a Banat: itinerario de una rebeldía (Madrid: Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, 1996); José Berruezo, Contribución a la historia de la CNT de España en el exilio (México D.F.: Mexicanos Unidos, 1967); José Peirats, De mi paso por la vida. Memorias (Barcelona: Flor del Viento, 2009). Regarding the last title, I have been fortunate to consult the original manuscript, not the abridged published edition that was inexplicably cut by the editors to make way for a rambling, sometimes insidious, 100-page introduction.

6 Occupying some 2.5 metres of shelf space in the International Institute of Social History (hereafter IISG) in Amsterdam, the José Peirats Valls Archive consists largely of his private correspondence with a few hundred Spanish exiles, overwhelmingly libertarians, but with a smattering of republicans, socialists, Catalan and Basque nationalists and dissident communists. Unless otherwise stated, cited correspondence is from IISG.

7 While obviously not all exiles chose to write memoirs, there is a long tradition of autobiographical writing in Spanish anarchist circles and the range of these memoirs reveals a rich amount of detail and several repeated patterns and trends.

8 Eduardo Pons Prades, Los que sí hicimos la guerra (Barcelona: Martínez Roca, 1973) and Federica Montseny, Pasión y muerte de los españoles en Francia: las luchas de la Resistencia (Toulouse: Universo, 1950).

9 David Messenger, L'Espagne Républicaine. French Policy and Spanish Republicanism in Liberated France (Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2008), 97–138. On the dreams and fears of Spain in the imagination of exiles, see Francie Cate-Arries, Culturas del exilio español entre las alambradas. Literatura y memoria de los campos de concentración en Francia, 1939–1945 (Barcelona: Anthropos, 2012), 91–105.

10 Ealham, Anarchism and the City, 34–53.

11 See Anna Monjo, Militants: democràcia i participació a la CNT als anys treinta (Barcelona: Laertes, 2003).

12 Pere Solà, Els Ateneus Obrers i la cultura popular a Catalunya (1900–1936) (Barcelona: La Magrana, 1978) and Francisco Javier Navarro, Ateneos y grupos ácratas (Valencia: Biblioteca Valenciana, 2002).

13 Paco Madrid, ‘La prensa anarquista y anarcosindicalista (desde la I Internacional hasta el final de la Guerra Civil, 1869–1939)’, unpublished doctoral thesis, Barcelona University, 1988–1989.

14 See Geographies of Power: Placing Scale, ed. Andrew Herod and Melissa W. Wright, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 2002) and Social Relations and Spatial Structures, ed. Derek Gregory and John Urry (London: Macmillan, 1985).

15 See James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance (Yale: Yale U. P., 1985).

16 For the repression, see Gutmaro Gómez and Jorge Marco, La obra del miedo. Violencia y sociedad en la España franquista (1936–1950) (Barcelona: Península, 2011); for a contemporary anarchist account, see Juan Manuel Molina, El movimiento clandestino en España, 1939–1949 (México D.F.: Mexicanos Unidos, 1976) and, by the same author, Noche sobre España. Siete años en las prisiones de Franco (México D.F.: Libro Mexicano, 1958).

17 Ángel Herrerín, ‘Reorganización y actividad de la CNT del interior en la primera década de la dictadura de Franco’, Ayer, 51 (2003), 155–78.

18 José Peirats, cited in Ángel Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo: clandestinidad y exilio (1939–1975) (Madrid: Siglo XXI, 2004), 36.

19 On this exodus, see Sharif Gemie, ‘The Ballad of Bourg-Madame: Memory, Exiles and the Spanish Republican Refugees of the “Retirada”’, International Review of Social History, 51:1 (2006), 1–40.

20 ‘the sensation of having been defeated materially; of having been forced to leave the land in which we were born; the infinite number of accumulated youthful memories which, little by little, were converted into a deep yearning […]’; ‘vicious dictatorship’ (Borrás, Del radical-socialismo, 81).

21 ‘the death of hope’ (Eduardo de Guzmán, La muerte de la esperanza [Madrid: G. del Toro, 1973]).

22 Peirats, De mi paso por la vida, V, b. 1, pp. 5–6; Borrás, Del radical-socialismo, 84–85.

23 Cate-Arries, Culturas del exilio, 31.

24 For Negre, see his Recuerdos de un viejo militante (Madrid: Malatesta, 2010 [1^st ed. 1919]).

25 Peirats, De mi paso por la vida, V, b.1, p. 7; José Borrás, Políticas de los exiliados españoles, 1944–1950 (Paris: Ruedo Ibérico, 1976), 199.

26 Peirats, De mi paso por la vida, V, b. 1, p. 11.

27 Borrás, Del radical-socialismo, 88.

28 I use the term in inverted commas because, rather than professional intellectuals, these figures were overwhelmingly ‘self-educated’ workers who had been educated within the counter-city and who possessed a high degree of culture. For the anarcho-syndicalist stance on the question of intellectuals, see José Peirats, Los intelectuales en la revolución (Barcelona: Ediciones Tierra y Libertad, 1938); for the cult of ‘self-educated’ workers, see pp. 71–80.

29 Members of the demobilized 26^th Division of the republican army, previously the Durruti Column, were all sent to Vernet, along with other ‘dangerous anarchists’ (José Peirats to Ramón Fortich Camps, 8 May 1986). See Ramón Liarte, ¡Ay de los vencedores! (Barcelona: Picazo, 1985), 57–67; Marie-Claude Rafaneau-Boj, Los campos de concentración de los refugiados españoles en Francia (1939–1945) (Barcelona: Omega, 1995) 168–81.

30 ‘In exile we saw many men burn out, people we previously believed were solid. Banishment was too great a test for several who seemed really grounded. Elegant types, genuine dandies that I knew from Barcelona, were transformed in Vernet into flea-infested wrecks of human beings. Others rummaged around like pigs in the piles of rubbish in search of a scrap of food. It was a most critical time, very tough, and the weakest were demoralized’ (José Peirats to Manuel Seva, 25 January 1983).

31 See Chris Ealham, ‘An Imagined Geography: Ideology, Urban Space, and Protest in the Creation of Barcelona's “Chinatown”, c.1835–1936’, International Review of Social History, 50:3 (2005), 373–97.

32 Borrás, Del radical-socialismo, 88–89; Peirats, De mi paso por La vida, V, b.1, p. 10.

33 For an insider's view, see Lope Massaguer, Mauthausen, fin de trayecto. Un anarquista en los campos de la muerte (Madrid: Fundación Anselmo Lorenzo, 1997).

34 See Montseny, Pasión y muerte de los españoles en Francia; for the ‘Grupo Ponzán’, see Pilar Ponzán, Lucha y muerte por la libertad: memorias de 9 años de guerra, 1936–1945 (Barcelona: Tot, 1996) and Antonio Téllez Solá, La red de evasión del Grupo Ponzán. Anarquistas en la guerra secreta contra el franquismo y el nazismo (1936–1944) (Barcelona: Virus, 1996). For an account by a member of the group, see Joan Català Balañà, El eterno descontento. Memorias de un luchador por la libertad en la guerra civil española y la segunda guerra mundial (Lécera: Jaime Cinca, 2007).

35 Alicia Alted, ‘El exilio de los anarquistas’, in Tierra y Libertad. Cien años de anarquismo en España, ed. Julián Casanova (Barcelona: Crítica, 2010), 167–90 (p. 168).

36 José Peirats, Estampas del exilio en América (Paris: CNT, 1950).

37 See El exilio republicano español en Toulouse, 1939–1999, ed. Alicia Alted and Lucienne Domergue (Madrid: UNED, 2003); for the role of the anarchists in the city, see the chapters by Oscar Borillo and Tomas Gómez, ‘Toulouse y el exilio libertario’ (113–47), Lucienne Domergue and Marie Laffranque, ‘Los españoles exiliados en Toulouse y la cultura: el ejemplo de los anarquistas’ (231–49) and Lucienne Domergue, ‘La prensa española del exilio en Toulouse y en el Mediodia de Francia, 1939–1975’ (251–69). The best academic study of the CNT in exile is Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo.

38 ‘composed in good part of Spaniards’ (Borrás, Del radical-socialismo, 105).

39 See, for instance, the pro-Francoist hagiography by José Francisco, Habla mi conciencia (Barcelona: Acervo, 1966).

40 Secretariado Intercontinental, Reseña de la Conferencia Intercontinental del Movimiento Libertario Español (Toulouse: Secretariado Intercontinental del MLE, n.d.).

41 According to Natacha Lillo, Toulouse was ‘en la práctica, el único lugar donde la CNT tuvo un protagonismo importante fue en la ciudad de Toulouse’ (‘in practice the only place where the CNT had an important presence was in the city of Toulouse’), in ‘El asociacionismo español y los exiliados republicanos en Francia: entre el activismo y la respuesta del Estado franquista (1945–1975)’, Historia Social, 70 (2011), 175–91 (p. 176).

42 Peirats, De mi paso por La vida, VII, b.13, p. 79.

43 Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 386–87.

44 Carlos Semprún Maura, El exilio fue una fiesta (Barcelona: Planeta, 1999).

45 Floreal Samitier Arroyos and José Luis García Rúa, Siempre volviendo a empezar: CNT dentro y fuera de España 1939–2009 (Badalona: Centre d'Estudis Llibertaris Federica Montseny, 2011), 110.

46 Ángel Carballeira Mombrió, Apuntes sobre ‘De mi paso por la vida: memorias de José Peirats Valls’ (Cahors: Recherche et Documentation d'Histoire Sociale [ReDHiC], 2010), 110.

47 Salvador Gurucharri and Tomás Ibáñez, Insurgencia libertaria. Las Juventudes Libertarias en la lucha contra el franquismo (Barcelona: Virus, 2010), 33.

48 Chris Ealham, ‘The “Herodotus of the CNT”: José Peirats and La CNT en la revolución española’, Anarchist Studies, 17:2 (2009), 81–104.

49 Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 146.

50 See Domergue and Laffranque, ‘Los españoles exiliados en Toulouse’, 247; Peirats, De mi paso, VII, b.13, pp. 98–100.

51 ‘all Spaniards, whether exiles or not’. ‘Our doors are open to all Spaniards, regardless of labels, whose spirit reflects broadly liberal and progressive ideas. Accordingly, excluded from its ranks are those elements who profess totalitarian ideas or who follow the discipline of organizations or parties inspired by these, be they from either the Eastern or the Western pole of totalitarianism. The disciplinary and barracks-like condition of these elements prevents them from joining a truly free association’ (cited in Peirats, De mi paso por la vida, VII, b.13, pp. 98–100).

52 Dolores Fernández, ‘Fuentes para el estudio del exilio español en Francia’, Migraciones y Exilios, 8 (2007), 55–68 (p. 63).

53 Peirats, De mi paso por La vida, VII, b.13, p. 100. See also Manuel Llatser, ‘Ateneo Español de Toulouse’, in L'exili cultural de 1939. Seixanta anys després, ed. María Fernanda Mancebo, Marc Baldó i Lacomba and Cecilio Alonso, 2 vols (València: Univ. de València, 2001), II, 117–28.

54 Domergue and Laffranque, ‘Los españoles exiliados en Toulouse’, 247.

55 Jann-Marc Rouillan, De Memoria (I). Los comienzos: Otoño de 1970 en Toulouse (Barcelona: Virus, 2007), 129, 131, 166.

56 Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 198.

57 ‘a union without unions’ (Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 192).

58 José Peirats, ‘Informe del delegado de Venezuela de las tareas del congreso de la CNT de España en exilio a que pudo asistir’ (10–16 August 1965), in Elementos para la comprensión correcta de 40 años de exilio confederal y libertario, ed. CNT (Paris: [n.p.], 1978), 135–54 (p. 147).

59 Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 380.

60 ‘The ideal and the motivation were the same ones we had in Spain but, unfortunately, the cohesion was not. In our country the members of the distinct CNT unions knew one another, they lived in the same neighbourhood or they worked in the same factory. There existed a common awareness and a contact between them that produced a mutual understanding and shared views. In France, on the contrary, what prevailed most was heterogeneity, in terms of where people came from, their thinking and their interests, and this often had a bearing on tensions and misunderstandings' (Joan Sans i Sicart, Comisario de guerra en el exilio [Lleida: Milenio, 2004], 119).

61 ‘The struggle that we maintain is more one for dignity and for ideas than for economic demands’ (‘Actuación libertaria’, Le Combat syndicaliste, 1963, cited in Crónicas de un rebelde andaluz, ed. Melchor Guzmán [Málaga: Ayuntamiento de Montejaque, 2007], 185).

62 See Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 75–96 and Álvarez, Historia negra, passim.

63 This issue will be analysed further in my forthcoming biography of Peirats.

64 Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 190–91.

65 The figures are taken from Herrerín, La CNT durante el franquismo, 196. The 1960 figure is in José Peirats, La práctica federalista como verdadera afirmación de principios (Paris: Federación Local de la CNT, 1964), 11.

66 Tellingly, that same year fewer than 6,000 activists voted on the decisive issue of the reunification of the CNT.

67 The partial increase reflects the reunification of the two wings of the CNT at the 1961 Limoges Congress.

68 One activist described this as ‘la mutación generacional y social del exilio’ (‘the generational and social mutation of exile’) (Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 146).

69 ‘the guidance offered in Assemblies came from comrades with grey hair’ (Carballeira Mombrió, Apuntes, 133).

70 ‘veterans who did not wish to grow old’; ‘restless youths who wanted to promote and make the revolution’; ‘aficionados of football and other leisure activities’ (Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 146).

71 Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 146.

72 Carballeira Mombrió, Apuntes, 110.

73 Samitier Arroyos and García Rúa, Siempre volviendo, 114, 146; José Peirats, ‘El humus nutricio’, Frente Libertario, 44 (July 1974), p. 8.

74 José Peirats to Conrado Lizcano and Salomé Moltó, 23 July 1988.

75 ‘We have not been able to reproduce in exile the broad surrounding context that we created in Spain, a climate that germinated almost spontaneously levy after levy of militants. In short, we have been capable of making our children into educated and respected young people, teachers and even engineers, but not militants. And a movement without reserves, without successors, which is incapable of reproducing itself, is condemned, either in the short or the long-term, to decadence and death’ (Peirats, ‘El humus nutricio’).

76 ‘constant worry’ (cited in Crónicas de un rebelde andaluz, ed. Guzmán, 77).

77 ‘without youth, renovation will be impossible. No progress. No hope’ (cited in Crónicas de un rebelde andaluz, ed. Guzmán, 81).

78 ‘the missing generation: the key generation, the bridging generation between yesterday, today and tomorrow, the generation required to carry and pass on the torch, the firmest guarantee of the libertarian tradition […]’ (José Peirats, Los anarquistas en la crisis política española [Buenos Aires: Alfa, 1964], 402).

79 José Peirats to José Agustín, 1 June 1970. This trend culminated in the publication of Frente Libertario (1969–1977); see Gómez Peláez, ‘De “Soli” ’, 129–33.

80 ‘a CNT without unions or the struggle against economic problems is nothing but a cult to a glorious past’ (Peirats, ‘Informe’ del delegado de Venezuela, 147).

81 ‘far from our quarry of recruits’ [the CNT was like] ‘an uprooted plant, which, little by little, has been withering, drying up and slowly dying’ (Peirats, ‘El humus nutricio’).

82 ‘the CNT in exile has become an asylum for the senile and the terminally insane […] [it is] an organization of unburied corpses’ (José Peirats to Francisco Botey, 7 September 1965).

83 Margaret Torres Ryan, ‘El anarquismo viejo y nuevo: la reconstrucción de la CNT, 1976–1979’, in La oposición libertaria al régimen de Franco (Madrid: Fundación Salvador Seguí 1993), 653–74.

84 Genaro Campos Ríos, ‘La Santa Alianza Democrática’, Cuadernos de Ruedo Ibérico, 58–60 (July–December 1977), 4–31.

85 Xavier Cañadas Gascón, El Caso Scala. Terrorismo de Estado y algo más (Barcelona: Virus, 2008).

86 For example, Jorge M. Reverte, ‘De holocaustos y matanzas’, El País, 11 May 2011, p. 4.